


A Holy Fool

by rowofstars



Series: Scars to Show [4]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Dirty Talk, F/M, Hyperion Heights, Minor Violence, Murder, Rumplestiltskin | Mr. Gold as Detective Weaver, Stalking, Woven Lace
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-29
Updated: 2018-07-29
Packaged: 2019-06-18 08:07:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15481380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rowofstars/pseuds/rowofstars
Summary: Weaver and Rogers do a little police work, but end up striking out. Meanwhile, Lacey has a disturbing moment after Nick is released from jail.





	A Holy Fool

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger warning for a brief moment of stalking. There's actually a plot starting to happen here. I hope you will bear with me while it plays out.

The doors swung shut behind Weaver as he entered the station.

He passed two other officers in street clothes, both on their way out from the night shift. The desk officer looked up and held out a few pink note slips, mouth already open and ready to speak.

“Detective, there’s a -”

Weaver snatched the thin squares of paper from his hand and and gave him a look that made the officer snap his mouth shut. Friday night was still fresh in his mind, both the dead body in the warehouse and the way he left things with Lacey. He hadn’t intended to leave her the way he did, but the way she’d looked at him pulled at something that he’d thought was dead, something that was too much of a liability to risk.

“You look like I feel,” Detective Rogers said, looking up from the papers in front of him. “I take it you didn’t get much sleep either?”

Weaver threw him a smirking look as he sat down in his chair. “Oh, was there a pea under your mattress keeping you awake, Detective?”

“Hardly.” Rogers grinned and flicked a bent paperclip across the desks. It skittered towards Weaver, then hit the edge of his coffee cup and bounced on the floor. “I recanvased the warehouses with the uniforms. We talked to some of the weekend shift workers at the docks, but no one saw anything. No one even knew what one of her workers would be doing in that warehouse. It wasn’t in use and they have their own maintenance crew that handles them. There’s no reason for Belfrey to send anyone down there.”

“Of course,” Weaver mumbled, sighing and running a hand over his face. He could feel the rough scrap of stubble against his palm and frowned. “ME’s report back yet?”

Rogers shook his head. “There was a suicide and a probable overdose that Stein wanted to clear before she looked at ours. She said we’d have it later this morning, but all we have right now is what she said at the scene. Stabbed and slashed with a short, curved blade.”

Weaver flipped through the message slips he grabbed from the desk officer, still scowling. They were nothing useful so he tossed them in the trash bin and sat back in his chair, toying with a pen. “So we’re at square one,” he said, and Rogers nodded sullenly. “I feel like I shouldn’t have even bothered to come in.”

“Likewise,” Rogers grumbled. “Where did you go anyway? You were out of that warehouse as soon as the body was in the wagon.”

He shrugged and raised his eyebrows, indicating he wasn’t going to tell his junior partner about the dark corners of Hyperion Heights he’d seen that weekend, or the money that had changed hands in the effort to find a lead. “Here and there.”

Rogers made a light scoffing noise. “The case, or Lacey French?”

Weaver bristled and stood up. “She has nothing to do with anything.” He snatched up his coffee mug and heading for the door. 

Rogers rolled his eyes and followed after him. “Hey,” he said quietly, catching up to Weaver in the breakroom. “I’m just giving you some shit, mate. I just thought -”

“Yeah, well we both know that’s not your strong suit, is it?” he snapped.

“Hey, whoa,” Rogers said, holding up his hands. Weaver’s eyes were hard, and his knuckles were white from the death grip he had on the coffee cup. “Look, I thought maybe you went to check on her or something. I mean she did help us get Branson, and his arraignment is today.”

“I didn’t see her,” he lied, filling his cup with coffee. “And I don’t think she gives much of a fuck about her ex-boyfriend’s court dates.”

Rogers shook his head. “Are you more pissed about the dead body we caught, or whatever happened between you two? I saw you leave Roni’s together.”

Weaver set the mug down hard and turned, pushing into Rogers’ space until he stepped back. “Last I checked, murderers don’t usually catch themselves or turn themselves in. So how about you focus on figuring out who bled out Benny Lund in a fucking warehouse, instead of my personal life?”

“Fine,” Rogers spat before he spun away and stalked back to his desk.

Weaver followed at a safe distance, trying to breath steadily to bring his pulse down. Getting worked up over Rogers’ bullshit wasn’t worth exposing his - whatever - with Lacey.

“So this guy, Lund,” Rogers started, “he was your CI or something?”

He nodded and paused to take a sip of coffee before he sat. “Or something. He was a maintenance guy who worked in Belfrey’s office building. He had access, and sometimes he heard or saw things that were useful.”

Rogers ran his thumb over the handle of his mug. “And he told you about those things?”

Weaver shrugged and smirked. “For the right price.”

“Right…” Just as Rogers was about to say something else, his phone rang. “Rogers?” He started to frown, and that made Weaver sit back, eyeing him across the space as he listened to the person on the other end. “Right. Okay, thanks.”

He hung up the phone and sagged, and Weaver’s lips curled. “Did your date cancel?”

“Fuck you.” Rogers gave him a withered look and leaned forward on his elbows. “No, that was Dr. Stein. Her unofficial report is that Benny was stabbed three times with a four-inch curved blade and died from loss of blood. The handle is probably a combination of metal and black plastic, because a piece of it ended up in the wound on his side.”

Weaver swallowed. “A piece of it broke off?” 

Rogers held his gaze for a moment and then looked down the desk, nodding. 

They were both thinking the same thing, about how the knife they’d been looking for, the one everyone seemed to know Nick Branson carried, the one three women had described in detail, was still out there somewhere. And now it might have been used in a murder. “Shit.”

Detective Rogers looked down again. “Yeah. If Branson’s lawyer hears about this…” 

His partner trailed off and Weaver clenched his right hand into a fist and pounded it sharply on the desk once. “ _Fuck._ ”

“Agreed,” Rogers sighed. “The warehouse is still tapped off. You wanna go back out and see if there’s anything we missed?”

Weaver ran a hand over his mouth and huffed. “You really think four detectives, ten patrol officers, and five crime scene techs missed something in an empty warehouse?”

The detective shrugged as he stood up and pulled his coat over one arm. “Maybe, maybe not. But I’m told murderers don’t generally catch themselves.”

The two exchanged a look, and whatever tension had been there seemed to dissipate. “Alright,” Weaver agreed, pushing himself up out of the chair. “But _I’m_ driving.”

 

 

* * *

 

The review of the crime scene yielded little, save for an open window that wasn’t previously noted. It was unlikely to be relevant, given that it was up about twelve feet from the floor, but Rogers called it in anyway for processing. That took the rest of the morning, and by the time they got back to the station, it was early afternoon. 

They were debating where to order lunch when the desk sergeant came in with a message. Rogers took one look at it and closed his eyes, shaking his head as he dropped it onto the desk with a muttered curse.

Weaver frowned and picked it up, the lines on his brow getting deeper with every word he read. “Shit.” 

He crumpled the paper in his hand and tossed it at the trash can. He missed, the paper bouncing off the side onto the floor. There was a metaphor there somewhere for how this case seemed to be going.

“Yeah,” Rogers sighed and flopped in his chair. “I mean we knew this could happen right? Judge Cutter loves bail and due process and - whatever. It doesn’t mean the case is shot.”

Weaver nodded and ran a hand through his hair before he picked up his coffee cup. He made to take a sip, but realized it had long since gone cold and wrinkled his nose. “I guess now we can put surveillance on him, or one of those monitoring things. Maybe he’ll screw up and -”

The desk officer leaned into the open door. “Hey, the lawyer for one of those ladies Branson went after wants to talk to one of you.”

Rogers made a face. “What about?”

The officer looked between the two detectives before he spoke. “Apparently his client, the skinny blonde I think, caught the first plane to Connecticut once she heard Branson got bail. He doesn’t think she’s gonna want to come back and testify.”

“Fuck!” Weaver spun on his heel, whipping the coffee mug towards the wall. It hit with a sickening crack and then fell to the floor where it shattered in several jagged pieces. Coffee dripped down and made a small puddle around the wadded up message slip.

 

 

* * *

 

Lacey stepped out of the Once Upon a Shelf used book store into the grey Hyperion Heights afternoon. 

She frowned up at the sky, hoping the rain would hold off until she made it home. Bracing herself on the post of the bus stop sign, she bent down and slipped off her four-inch heels, replacing them with a more comfortable pair of flats. Her feet hurt from spending most of the day on them unpacking, cataloging, and shelving new inventory in the shop, but at least being among books during her workday was better than her previous job at Mr. Cluck’s. Going home every day with the musty scent of dust and paper was far preferable to the sickening smell of fry oil clinging to her clothes. Her skin was better off for it too.

As she straightened, a strange feeling washed over her and goosebumps appeared along her arms. She felt like she was being watched, and she turned, shoes dangling from her fingers as she looked around. A few people passed by her but paid her no mind, and she frowned as the odd sensation seemed to abate. 

Then something caught her eye across the street and she froze.

_Nick._

Lacey stared across the street and swallowed hard, her hand tightening around the pole of the bus stop sign until her knuckles went white. He shouldn’t be out of jail, not with so many charges pending against him, but here he was right outside where she worked, lurking like some kind of stalker. He flashed her a crooked smile, the one that never seemed to reach his eyes and always seemed to preceed a violent outburst. It made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up, and she moved her hand to her purse strap in case she had to run. 

A delivery truck pulled up, its brakes squealing loudly, and blocked her view. She tried to look around it, but by the time she moved around the bus stop, the truck was already passing by. She looked again and Nick was gone.

She glanced nervously up and down the street on both sides and walked to corner to see if he’d turned one direction or the other, but there was no one that even vaguely resembled him. The bus pulled up a few minutes later and Lacey hurried to get on, taking a seat at the back so no one could watch her from behind, just in case. 

She shook her head and pulled her phone out of her purse. It was ridiculous to think that somehow he’d spirited himself out of jail to wait outside the bookstore just in case she worked today so he could spy on her like some creeper. They were stopped at the next traffic light when she thought she saw him again, standing outside Roni’s bar. She gripped the armrest. The man turned and looked at the bus, then met her eyes through the window, but it wasn’t Nick. She exhaled in relief and moved her fingers up to clutch at her purse strap again.

As the bus lurched into motion, she leaned back in the seat and blew out a breath, finally feeling the tension in her chest subside.

By the time Lacey arrived home, she’d seen the local news update that Nick Branson was out on bail pending trial. Convinced that it really was Nick waiting for her to get off work, she took the stairs two at a time. The door to her apartment shut hard and she leaned against it for a long moment, her eyes closed as she tried to get the image of Nick’s smirking face out of her mind.

As soon as her breathing slowed, she pushed off the door and dropped her purse on the floor. Normally, it would sit on the table just inside the door, but that wasn’t an option. She stared at the empty space for a moment, remembering the table that had been there and the feeling of Weaver’s hands on her hips as he fucked her, and then shook her head. She wasn’t going to think about that right now, not when there were still splinters of wood she needed to vacuum up from Friday night’s _activities_. She turned the lock on the doorknob and then flipped the deadbolt above it, her nerves settling a bit when the heavy thunk of the metal slid into the wood. She reached up and slipped in the door chain, then punched in the code on the alarm system. 

It was a cheap thing, wireless with only two sensors, that she’d got a local electronics store a few months back. She’d put one on the window in her bedroom and one on the apartment door. It wasn’t very sophisticated but the ear-piercing sound they let out when they went off could wake up half the building and hopefully scare off any intruder. Just hearing the beep when it armed itself was a relief. If Weaver had noticed her little version of Fort Knox, and she very much doubted he did, he’d never said anything about it. It was far more likely that he was only interested in getting in her pants one more time and not the plethora of locks on her door.

Thunder rumbled gently outside and she sighed, moving into the small kitchen to make a cup of tea. Her apartment was her sanctuary, such as it was, and she was grateful that she’d never been stupid enough to bring Nick back here. Whatever she’d first seen in him was long gone, and she suspected the only reason he was lurking around had less to do with lingering romantic feelings and more to do with scaring her away from talking to the cops. She hoped he hadn’t figured out the part she’d played in his arrest.

The last time she’d been the cause of a guy getting arrested, she’d barely walked away with two killer scars.

Lacey rolled her neck and shoulders, listening to the pop of the kettle as it heated up melding with the patter of rain against the window. She looked down and rubbed at her arm, her eyes tracing the line of her scar, thin and white with age and faded enough that few ever noticed it. About three inches long, it ran from the crease of her elbow along the outside of her forearm. There was another on her side that curved from her navel to just up under her ribs, but it was a little wider and harder to hide. She pressed her hand there, surprised that she could still remember the exact feeling of the sharp burning sting.

She lifted the kettle off the burner just as it started to whistle and tried to put the memories out of mind. It was lucky for her that most guys didn’t care if she got all of her clothes off when they fucked her. All they wanted was easy access, and all she wanted was no awkward questions to ruin the moment. 

It felt like her whole life had been just surviving, running from the same bullshit in every city along the way, Melbourne to New York to Boston, then all the way out to Seattle by way of Omaha. She wrapped her hands around the hot mug of tea and blew across the rim, wondering if she’d overstayed her welcome in Hyperion Heights, and if it was time to move on again.

 

 

* * *

 

The apartment door slammed shut with a shove from Weaver’s foot.

He pulled his badge from the waistband of his jeans, setting it on the kitchen island next to a stack of mail he’d ignored all last week. His gun followed, and then his leather jacket, which he tossed over the back of a chair. 

First priority after arriving home was always a drink. Soda or iced tea on a good day, a beer if it was average. Today was a whiskey day, and he reached across the counter to grab the half-empty bottle. He poured some in a glass and then paused with it halfway to his mouth. The glass was the same one he’d used last night, but he shrugged and drank from it anyway. It was alcohol, he reasoned, what could it hurt.

He flopped down on the sofa as he sipped the whiskey, savoring the heat that slipped down his throat. His eyes moved around the room before landing on the TV and catching his reflection in the dark glass. Sighing, he pushed himself up and tipped back the rest of his drink, wincing as it burned down to his stomach.

Weaver set the glass down on the coffee table and pulled his cell phone from his pocket, frowning at the screen as he swiped his thumb over it. He had taken a picture of Lacey’s contact information from Branson’s arrest report, and he toyed with the idea of calling her with a warning that the bastard was out. He didn’t think she was in any immediate danger, but keeping it from her felt wrong.

He thought about pouring another drink before he called her, but his head was already fuzzy enough and another would probably just make him pass out on his lumpy couch. That was a recipe for waking up with back pain and regret come morning.

Dialing before he could second guess himself, he paced around the small living room space as the phone rang. Eventually the call went to voicemail and he scowled. She didn’t have his personal number, so she couldn’t know it was him, but he still felt like he was being given the brush off. He redialed and this time she picked up on the second ring.

“Hello?”

“Lacey,” he said, pausing to clear his throat. “It’s Weaver.”

She huffed. “The hell do you want?”

He took a breath and dropped back on the sofa. “Branson’s out.”

Lacey rolled her eyes and shook her head. “No shit, Sherlock. I saw him on the street.”

Weaver frowned and sat forward. “Where? When?”

“Outside work,” she said, folding her legs under her as she remembered Nick’s creepy smirking smile. “He was across the street from the bookstore.”

“Did he say anything to you? Did he follow you? Did he -”

His rapid fire questions felt a bit like an interrogation and she bristled. She popped up off the couch, her hand on her hip as if he was there and she was ready to get in his face. “Look, nothing happened. He was just there and then he was gone.”

Weaver’s hand clenched into a fist. He knew Branson was trying to get a rise out of her, that stalking her was his way of saying ‘I know what you did.’ It was a thinly veiled threat toward someone who was a potential witness against him, but it was legal enough that they couldn’t do anything to him. He would probably do it again if no one sent him a proper message.

“That man is dangerous,” he growled. “You call me if -”

“Ha!” She interrupted, tossing her head back. “Again with the brilliant deductions. Wow, they really didn’t hold back in detective school, did they?”

“Lacey,” he said, his voice taking on a tone he usually reserved for recalcitrant suspects and idiot junior officers.

“I don't need you to protect me,” Lacey snapped. “So fuck off.” 

He sighed and swallowed, wishing he’d had that second drink before calling her. “I’m just trying to look out for you.”

Her lips pressed together and she spun on her heel, her eyes settling on the empty space by the door where her entry table should have been, the one he casually fucked her on and broke before he left. Anger welled up inside her, making her face feel hot.

“No,” she said firmly. “You don’t get to just do anything for me, okay? You don’t get to treat me like some random Tinder hookup, break my fucking table, and then split.”

He pulled a face. “I had a _dead body_ to deal with, what the hell else was I supposed to do?” 

He heard her little scoffing sound on the other end and ran a hand over his face. He was an asshole, he knew, but they both got what they wanted out of the moment, such as it was. She wanted a quick, rough fuck, and he was more than happy to give it to her. “Seemed like you got what you needed, anyway.”

She knew she shouldn’t have read more into the situation than there was, but some stupid part of her really wanted to mean something to someone, just once. Sniffling back the tears that she knew came from that line of thinking, she said, “You would think that.”

Weaver licked his lips and started to smirk. “Oh? I’m sorry, were you disappointed with your evening, Miss French?”

His voice had dropped a bit, and she shivered. “Excuse me?”

He leaned back against the couch cushions and closed his eyes. His mind derailed into inappropriate territory too quickly where Lacey was concerned, but she hadn’t hung up on him and he could hear the little hitch in her voice. 

“I’m sure you remember,” he said, vividly recalling the feeling of her hot, wet pussy around his fingers. “You seemed quite enthusiastic at Roni’s.”

Lacey swallowed hard and squeezed her eyes shut and her thighs pressed together. Her body was almost immediately on edge just from his words and the memory of what they’d done. 

“Bastard,” she muttered. Her free hand skimmed down her body, toying with the idea of seeing where this sudden turn in the conversation would lead. 

He chuckled and pressed his free hand against the front of his jeans where his cock was already half-hard just from thinking about her and what they’d done. “Mmm, but I’m a bastard who can make you come hard even when there’s dozens of people around.” 

She was almost panting into the phone, and he bit back a groan. “All those people right there,” he continued, “listening to the band while I had my fingers deep inside you. Any of them could have turned and looked. What would they have seen, Lacey?”

They would have seen her with her dress up around her waist and his hand between her legs. 

They would have seen her fighting not to scream as her orgasm overwhelmed her. 

They would have seen Racy Lacey in all her glory.

“Fuck you,” she spat as she turned to pace anxiously around her couch.

“Is that an invitation?” he asked. He knew he wanted it to be, and if it was he’d be over to her place as fast as traffic allowed. Hell, he might even negate traffic entirely and put on the lights.

“ _No._ ” Then she stopped and ran a hand through her hair. She wasn’t going to let herself be draw in by him again, even if her body desired nothing more. “And don’t call me again, _Detective._ ”

She dropped her phone onto the coffee table and grabbed a pillow form the sofa, using it to cover her face as she screamed. Her panties were damp, her pussy was throbbing, and she wanted to murder a police detective.

Weaver’s stomach sank as the connection went dead. He sat back against the couch and ran a hand over his mouth as his arousal subsided. He knew he was an idiot and a jerk, but somehow in the moment he couldn't help himself from pushing just a bit too far. A second later, he swept the coffee table clean, sending the glass and two magazines flying into a heap of shattered glass and wet paper on the floor.


End file.
